


Process of Elimination

by lesbomancy



Category: WildStar (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 11:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6078108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbomancy/pseuds/lesbomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Science is COOL!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Process of Elimination

It was a disquiet that made the mind wander, focusing on the minutia of breathing and the sound of one’s eyeballs rolling in their sockets. She could hear her prosthetic’s inner workings as if they were blasted via a loudspeaker right in front of her face. Where she was there was no air, no smell, no true ‘sight’ nor presence of pressure. Every little sound in the personal hell she had willingly transported her own body to became increasingly overbearing. The slow, steady thumping of her heart increased and with each moment she began to feel how she imagined a collapsed lung would feel.

A struggling, fleshy, weak organ without it’s normal protection. The lack of air was literally suffocating. She had the sensation before and was unafraid - many times a maniac who considered himself doing the work of the Gods wrapped their sweaty palms around her neck. It was all she could do to not thrash and paw violently at her body as it heaved and retched trying to take in air where none was to be found.

The lack of light was new - blindness was not something she had truly experienced before, the closest incident would have been a temporary blindness induced by ‘non-lethal’ means when she was a hot-headed student at the Grismaran University of Medical Science. All those centuries ago she was a woman who believed in logic and reason rather than alchemical happenstance and guesswork. She abandoned her outward hatred when a constable sprayed her in the eyes with a product of the said alchemical happenstance. She knew that there was nothing to fear in her temporary blindness now - this was simply a place without light. The implication was exhilarating.

What truly felt queer was the pressure around her, as if she were being crushed and left to float freely at the same time. She had never been much of a swimmer, always too self-conscious of herself in such revealing clothing to truly try any feats of aquatic dexterity in the deep oceans she has seen now and the few on her rocky homeworld. The descriptions from victims of SCAR’s deep-sea mining failures always spoke of a similar pressure, she imagined this was why most of them killed themselves before the waters poured into their facilities.

Her teeth ground together, swishing around the metallic taste of blood and the sickly chemical Vitalus as if it were a cocktail, the doctor’s face contorting into a sneer even as she chortled for air. Some sort of uninvited presence made itself known to her and even between her hazardous materials suit she knew it was slick, almost oily, as it investigated her like a wild animal would an abandoned toy. She was glad it was not a being which explored with it’s mouth or teeth, gnashing at new things simply because it was not intelligent enough to do anything but digest it’s surroundings.

The smallest, faintest shaft of light ripped open in existence before her, the visor in her helmet automatically tinting to prevent what would have surely been a very hefty dosage of ocular pain. Whatever presence which was around her had left, sliding away like a hacked-off vine. With her surroundings illuminated by a sickly fluorescent lighting she peered around, hearing herself swallow so loud that it made her shiver.

The Void was named appropriately. It resembled something of a mixture between dark space and the deep ocean. Gerra had theorized that it was an a divergent realm of existence running alongside their own and that traversing the small distances “Spellslingers” did was the transdimensional equivalent of using a bullet train to travel instead of walking. 

An alarm in her helmet went off and the air around her distorted. Gerra lurched as a pressure hauled her through a journey of space and time, instantaneously being blinding - again - by a sickeningly bright light. Everything hurt and ached - whatever contents in her stomach shooting out into her suit as she struggled to a sitting position. M.O.T.H.E.R.’s soothing voice and ‘helping hands’ in the form of drones, Khruschev and Strausse peeling her out of the sticky pressure suit.

Covered in vomit and allowing herself to be peeled out of her suit, Gerra lounged back and focused on breathing and eventually opening her eyes. What was she hoping to achieve by staying in there so long? The key to travel, an understanding to a place which had taken so many bright minds and scrambled them? Every sensor reading on her suit indicated that she was only a few seconds before the cut-off point, before she would likely never return.

What is there to achieve in a place where life cannot thrive?

“End trial sixty-nine,” Gerra ordered.

“Sure thing, creator!” M.O.T.H.E.R. returned, “Would you like to continue at a later date, darling?”

The woman inhaled as much as she could. Inhale. Count to 4. Exhale.

“No. Mark Project Phaseshift closed. Send copies to the Academy - we will find another way.”

The Void proved to be a dead-end. Faster-than-light travel had to have a key, something more grand and more efficient than modern day warp drives. 

Process of elimination was a start.


End file.
